my romantic tryst with cancer

I leave next week for (almost, but not quite) a week near the sea, in the sun. I'll be staying at the idyllic Rancho Sak Ol , in Puerto Morelos (thanks for the recommendation of the town Koo). It's a small fishing village a half hour south of Cancun. What it's not is an all-inclusive pit of suburban whining and entitled excess which I have no interest in going to. I need this time away to regroup and recharge. I plan to read, play with the dog (who is purported to own the place), eat, sleep, and most of all enjoy my time with the ocean that I miss so very much. In many ways this place reminds me (and already smells like) my childhood weekends in Juhu. The weather there (to turn those of you who are in North America green with envy) is a calm 26C as I write this in chilly Toronto.

I've seen my fair share of them, and tonight some more. On the train downtown, I saw a man bully his own child. Sick... This lovely boy, not yet 6, got on with his mum and this man. He was playing with his trains, and like most kids do, entertained himself. The man kept threatening the mother that she should have left the kid with her parents, that if the kid didn't behave the night was off and they were going home, that he was misbehaving, that the kid was the reason their relationship wasn't going to work. The child sat between them through all of this, slowly shrinking, getting still, wanting to be invisible. The mother kept fawning over the weasly excuse of a man. He did interrupt his rant to call a friend when the train surfaced briefly to tell him he was "out with his girl" and that he'd bet 40 on three games. And then he started picking on the child. We all sat still, involved yet not. I'm angry, at the man, but even more at myself. I glared a

"grant me the serenity to accept what I cannot change, the courage to change what I can, and the wisdom to know the difference..." I'd heard this many times before, but I learned the meaning of it last night.

My life changed today. This wasn't a fireworks moment, or an epiphany, just a gentle drawing open of curtains, and a revelation of the heart... Serendipitously, I attended a day-long meditation retreat with my friend Bryan on a beautiful campus in Guelph earlier today. I've been searching for some time now for a structured form of meditation to calm the storm I realise I'm in, but instead it found me. Bryan mentioned him going there in passing last week, and I’m not sure if I invited myself, or he did me, but hesitatingly something in me knew I needed to be there. Thank you Bryan. Thank you Molly ... The first half of my silent day was marked by frustration. My attempts to focus on my body and breathing seemed futile. I was conscious of a searing pain in my neck, that more firmly seeded my lingering fears that the cancer had not left me, and this fed on itself and ferreted out my darkest fears of illness and death. The walking meditation that was inserted into our sitt